When I was a child I had a vinyl recording from the folks at Disney that contained two Rudyard Kipling stories – “The Cat Who Walked By Himself” and “The Elephant’s Child” both from the The Just So Stories. I cannot say that this was the beginning of a lifelong love of Kipling’s work, but it did secure him a place in my heart and I would visit him from time to time in the decades that followed by reading (or watching) The Man Who Would be King or a poem here or there.
You might then be able to imagine my shock when I discovered from an acquaintance attending university that Kipling had been banned from the curriculum for being a racist and an imperialist. It appears that Rudyard was too politically incorrect for the 1990’s and beyond, and yet, his poem “If” was voted Britain’s favourite poem in a poll taken in 1998. Of course, I have been familiar with the poem most of my life, but it was only recently that its full measure was revealed to me. If you need to refresh your memory of the poem click here.
In my more frivolous moments I describe myself as a preacher of the Church of the Romantic. To put that more seriously, I am an outspoken advocate and writer on the subject of the Romantic philosophy. What I mean by that is that from roughly 1776-1929 a culture dominated Western Civilization built upon the ideas of the Enlightenment. The first burst came in the form of art, what is called the Romantic Period. From there it entered the mainstream to form what today we call “the Modern World”.
In contrast, the post-Romantic Era from 1929-the present is often called the Post-Modern. I call it the Socialist Era because of the cultural shift from Romantic Individualism to Collectivist Socialism in the sense that social planning on the state level is seen as preferable to individual responsibility.
To illustrate these two cultural worldviews imagine two men walking down the street and they encounter a down-and-out homeless man. The Romantic stereotype would say, “How horrible that this man has done this to himself.” The Socialist stereotype would say, “How horrible that we live in a society that allows this to happen to this kind of person.” The Romantic sees the world as individuals and the Socialist sees it in terms of society and groups.
In my studies of the Romantic I discovered the work of the French-American cultural historian Jacques Barzun and read his book, Classic, Romantic, and Modern in which he makes a very interesting point that I had long over-looked. This is the idea of equilibrium. When I had studied the Romantic in school and university I was given a list of topics that characterised Romanticism. It included things like Nature, Love, Death, drug use, etc.. One of these qualities was extremism. This shows the ignorance of whoever compiled this list. Barzun demonstrates that Romanticism is not about extremes, rather what he calls equilibrium.
I will confess that it is a difficult concept to grasp. Barzun describes the Romantic as bringing "into tense equilibrium many radical diversities". So it is not balance per se, or compromise, or even an amalgam, but rather apparent opposites in mutual existence, like light acting as both a wave and a particle. David Hume illustrated this concept when he wrote that, "without passion, no idea has any force". This demonstrates the equilibrium between the perceived extremes of emotion and reason. Passion without reason has no brain and Reason without passion has no heart. Neither extreme is desirable, so instead we seek that point of equilibrium.
For another example, Romanticism is all about the individual; however we cannot deny the legitimate demands of the group in which the individual is a part. So there needs to be an equilibrium between the extremes of the individual and the collective. Anyone seeking to adopt the cultural philosophy that I have labelled here as “the Romantic” must focus on attaining equilibrium.
So in the Church of the Romantic is seems reasonable to adopt Kipling’s poem “If” as a sort of prayer or creed to guide us down the path of equilibrium. Here are a few lines to illustrate.
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
The word Romantic is often associated with fancy, imagination, and delusion. The origin of this lies in the origin of the word Romantic. The word originally meant Roman-like to describe the Latin patois that would eventually become the Romance languages of French, Spanish, and Italian. In time the word Romantic came to describe the popular medieval stories in these languages. These stories usually featured supernatural creatures and persons, like dragons, fairies or wizards. So the word Romantic came to be associated with the fantastical.
There was another element to these Romances and that was action. The brave hero knight acted to reach resolution. To make a more modern example, think of Star Wars as a Romance. There are fantastic creatures and magic powers and this is what we think of when we think of Star Wars. The action seems secondary. For action films we look to Die Hard. This is unfortunate because action is at the heart of the Romantic.
Dreams and thoughts are key components of the Romantic, but we cannot forget that their purpose is to drive action. The man who makes dreams his master is the Comic-con geek who is lost in fantasy. The man who makes thoughts his aim is the academic always looking for new ideas or refining his thoughts. Neither man has balanced these dreams and thoughts with action.
Now imagine the scientist inspired by Star Trek to invent some new technology. This happens all the time. Or imagine the soldier who performs an act of heroism because he is unconsciously inspired by Captain America or Wolverine. This is the balance between the inner world of dreams and thoughts and the outer world of action required by the Romantic path. Now let’s look at the next coupling.
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
Here we are presented with extremes of Triumph and Disaster. One theory of human emotion is that there are four root emotions from which all other emotions flow and these fall into two categories. One set is reality based. These are happiness and sorrow as the gaining or loss of a value. The second set is imaginary. These are desire and fear as the imagined gaining or loss of a value. These can be divided in another way between gaining-based emotions and loosing-based emotions – Triumph and Disaster.
So how are these imposters? I remember reading an article from a man who wrote about how happy he was when he bought his first Mercedes. He felt as if he had arrived. However, this triumph was short lived because after about a month his vehicle ceased to be his Mercedes and simply became his car. Likewise when disaster strikes it is a singular event that passes and when it passes it is in the past and the only life it has comes from dwelling on its memory.
The sense of triumph may inspire your confidence to greater victories or it may make you complacent as you revel in the memory of past deeds but accomplish nothing more. The sense of disaster may cripple your confidence to inaction or it may inspire you to fight harder. But in the end all that matters are the actions of the now. Past triumphs and disasters once passed are equally nothing but memory and both are imposters to the present. So the trick in balancing the extremes of life’s ups and downs, whether you get the bear or the bear gets you, lies in accepting that there is no bear. All that exists is how you choose to feel about it.
The previous two examples dealt with the balance between the inner world of thoughts and emotions and the outer world of action and consequence. The last example I would like to give pertains to social equilibrium.
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
Again we are presented with opposites and we are admonished to find the equilibrium. The word I would like to focus on here is virtue. In Aristotelian ethics a virtue is defined as a positive habit and he encourages us to cultivate these positive habits. Virtue is to be found in “the Golden Mean” which is the balance of extremes. For example, courage is a virtue however too much courage is rashness and too little courage is cowardice.
I believe what Kipling is advocating here is Pride. Now pride is an often misunderstood and ill-defined concept. Going back to Aristotle, pride is seen as the crown of virtues. It is the reward for living a virtuous life. The opposite is arrogance where someone demands the reward without earning it.
So pride is a self-belief and self-confidence born of experience. When a man is admired by the group it is very easy for him to be swayed by them because he wants to keep the praise coming. The same holds true when important people treat him as being important. It’s natural to want to keep that positive feedback coming. The danger lies in abandoning those virtues which are the source of his pride in order to please the crowd or the king. When this occurs his pride transforms into arrogance.
I mentioned my humorous self-conceit as being a preacher in the Church of the Romantic and that the Romantic period ran from 1776-1929. Well, I also dress the part. My clothes are all custom made from 1880’s patterns from my trousers, to my waistcoat, to my frock coat. So you can imagine that I get noticed publically.
If someone on the street was to call me a cabbage, then I would certainly be puzzled. I might try to figure-out what they meant by that, but I certainly would not be hurt. Several years back I boarded a bus and some teenage girl in the back shouted, “get a grip” and she and her friends laughed. That hurt.
I have dressed in this manner for about twenty years now, though the style has been refined over time. For me, these are just my clothes and as normal to me as another’s jeans and T-shirt. Like them, I dress in a manner that suits my tastes, personality, and beliefs. This does not mean that I am immune to the social mirror. I am very much aware that I am different and I dislike it when that difference is pointed out.
So if someone was to call me a cabbage, it would be nothing to me. However, if someone was to challenge my grip on reality or perceive me as a joke then they are tapping into my innate sense of alienation from society. They are essentially putting salt into an existing wound.
Eleanor Roosevelt, who was one ugly woman, famously said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” I mention her looks because it adds gravity to the quote. Foes can only hurt you when they have an ally in your psyche. So once more we are back to the concept of pride. If you believe in yourself, and have the virtues to back-up that self-estimation, then you are inoculated against such threats of harm.
Assuming that the harm from foes is in the form of destructive criticism, we may also assume that the hurt from loving friends is constructive criticism. Nobody is perfect. Sometimes we get it wrong and sometimes it takes a friend to tell us when we are acting like a complete ass. The question is how we take it. Do we feel hurt and hold it against them, or do we take their criticism under advisement to discover if there is truth to it. Pride comes from virtue and virtue comes from balance. It may seem strange to put it this way, but if you respond to your friend with pride then you are not hurt by their remarks but grateful, because they are helping you maintain your balanced virtues and therefore your pride.
The final phrase, “If all men count with you, but none too much;” is a counter to this one. On the one hand there is criticism, either destructive or constructive, and on the other there is praise in the form of allies “counting with you”. Over the decades I have been praised as a writer. Every now and then someone comes along who praises a bit too much and too often. At this point I start to doubt their sincerity. It is good to have many friends and allies, but dangerous to be surrounded by “yes men” or to compromise yourself.
Social equilibrium is the balance between man the individual and man the social creature. Humans as a species are neither solitary tigers nor hive-minded ants but a little of both. So how does the Romantic individualist balance the needs of the self and that of the other selves that compose society?
Kipling does not give us a nice and neat answer. I do not see this as an omission on his part because there is no fixed answer. It is a question of balance. Sometimes you must walk with kings and other times you are in the crowd. Sometimes you take the rebuke and other times you take the praise. The only constant is you, how you choose to perceive, respond and act.
The Hindus teach that ours is the world of Karma. The West has mystified this concept, but all it really means is action/reaction or cause/effect. In “If”, we see Kipling repeatedly arguing for equilibrium between the inner world of thoughts and feelings and the outer world of action with the balance favouring the latter. Ours is the world of physical action with thoughts and feelings playing a vital but auxiliary role.
To this end Kipling encourages us to take risks, build something of value, and to persevere regardless of success or failure. Likewise he discourages us from being too subjective by judging the world according to sentimentality, which can often lead to self-harm and delusion. Most importantly, he encourages pride born of virtue.
The word virtue has the root vir meaning Man. You see, men are not born but made. Every man instinctively knows this. This is why we have the phrase “be a man” and every culture has its rites of passage into manhood. Women can just be, but Men must become and it is the balanced life of virtue that is the path to manhood.
I have argued here that Romanticism as a concept is actually masculine despite the modern belief that it is feminine. We see this in the Romantic concepts laid out by Kipling to his Victorian readers during the Romantic Twilight. According to Matthew Sweet in his book, Inventing the Victorians, the Victorian man struggled with this crisis of masculinity just as much as modern men do. I recently discovered that my personal role model, my father, lived in the shadow of his dad just I live in the shadow of mine.
So what makes a “real man”? From the sublime to the ridiculous, these are some lyrics from the song “Now You’re A Man” by the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. “What makes a man? Is it the power in his hands? Is it his quest for glory?... Is it the woman in his arms?” These are the answers given by the modern media. Think of the stereotype of the football jock, the popular tough guy with hot girlfriend. This is the role model we have been given. Kipling and the Romantics reject this premise.
The quest of masculinity is the quest for virtue, and this is to be found when each man finds his unique centre, his balance, his equilibrium. It is this portable inner strength that allows him to walk with kings or move in the common crowd. He does not need to curry favour to feed his ego through overt shows of power or in pursuit of fickle female admiration. Nor does he loose his way in the tumultuous waves of dreams, thoughts, or sentimentality. He is, quite simply, an oak.
It is this solid grounding of the self, born of virtue, which leads Kipling to conclude his poem with the assurance that if you can accomplish all these things:
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
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